Is ForeclosureGate About To Become The Banking Industry's Stalingrad?

Will the High Frequency Signing scandal be the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Perhaps. In the meantime, here is a soon to be viral, and all too real, parody of foreclosure gate. At this point the guilty parties are irrelevant. All that matters is that America's terminal collapse into a banana republic status is now obvious for all to see. And as for Cramer saying foreclosure gate will only force home prices to go higher, pray tell dear Jim, just which buyers will put their own money into a home when they have no idea at what time the real title holder shows up with a restraining and eviction order, and demands immediate access. Of course, there is a loophole: the Fed will simply henceforth pay for all home purchases. And should the government drop mortgage rates to zero, and subsidize tax and insurance payments into infinity, that may well happen. Of course, it will also bankrupt the country, but since when was America's insolvency news to anyone...

These adjectives mean marked by a narrow, often tiresome focus on or display of learning and especially its trivial aspects: a pedantic writing style; an academic insistence on precision; a bookish vocabulary; donnish refinement of speech; scholastic and excessively subtle reasoning.

Actually, the word you are looking for is "punctilious" which implies a proper (albeit strict) application of the english language whereas pedantic implies an authoritative/dogmatic color. A slight but important distinction which without we wouldn't be in this mess.

Same tactic beat Napoleon who depended on local assets for food and fuel. When Napoleon finally took Moscow and found it empty of anything of value, he was done for and couldn't retreat to safe lines before getting cut to pieces by winter, hunger and marauding Cossacks.

Looks like the mainstream media, aka the fawning corporate press, is conditioning the public to believe that TRAP 1.0 was successful beyond our wildest dreams, thus paving the way for TARP 2.0, followed closely by TARPs 3 thru 10.

This article reads like something produced by the Fed or Treasury rather than "news". Of course, for the past few decades, most "news" is really various Pentagon and WH press releases rewritten in the news "repeaters" own words.

For all those that whine about how this will be swept under the rug, ignored, or otherwise funded by a tax-payer bailout - instead of whining, DO SOMETHING. This is our moment, our chance. Unlike in prior bailouts with crisis's that came quickly and <could> be blamed on a variety of parties, the banks CANNOT BLAME ANYONE ELSE FOR NOT DOING THEIR JOBS (and not transferring notes, proper underwriting, avoiding centuries of RE law, etc., etc.). And then for covering it up by kicking people out of their homes without due process and committing fraud upon the court.

DO SOMETHING. Any one that doesn't, and still complains, deserves what they eventually get.

Some ideas:

Write your state AG to ask them to participate in any investigation. Bring in the MBS issue. Express concern about your own title. Use a friend/family member as a story. Discuss the rule of law. How white collar crime is just as damaging to the health of our society. Ask that they halt foreclosures, but also look deeper into the original sin of this.

Write your hedge fund, pension administrator, bond mutual fund, bond ETF manager to inquire about their knowledge of the situation and if their RMBS has appropriately secured positions in the underlying assets.

Write an editorial to the paper, asking for them to report on this. Discuss a couple issues. Warn your fellow citizens about the health of their society.

Write to your senators and representatives (state and national) - that they support an investigation in this. Warn them about the idea of bailing out the banks again.

Write a letter to your bank asking for proof of title/loan ownership. I'll scan the web to see if any already exist.

Inform any friends/family in foreclosure or near it of this issue, and its possible ramifications.

Move any checking accounts/money out of the TBTF banks.

Post some information on MSM website/blogs to correct their interpretations of this as just some technical documentation issues.

Any other ideas people have to take action? What would happen if 100,000 people simultaneously asked for proof of loan ownership/standing?

It may not be much for now, but movements start small and grow until they hit the tipping point. That would be our aim.

yes its important for the news to get out, but i'm not looking for the states to protect anyone. it's up to the citizens to protect themselves by simply forcing the banks to abide by the (state) laws. an illegal foreclosure, is illegal. there are plenty of fraud, perjury, forgery, and racketerring laws on the states books. they need to be enforced. that goes for civil and criminal laws.

Class actions are great for tort law, but these are frauds against the court and fall into the criminal domain. States are going to use the proceeds to repopulate their emptied coffiers... that is, unless the federal government takes a personal interest and begins bailing states out with the pervisio that they do not pursue.

The systemic fraud called MBS, CMBS, CDOs and CDS, an alphabet soup of scandal, is about to cause a seizure in the housing and commercial real estate sectors. The banksters were given trillions because they were Too Big Too Fail. Criminals like Mozilo, Thain, Dimon, Fuld, Lewis and many many more knowingly sold fraudulent securities on to pension funds. The rabbit is out of the hat and a growing chorus of lawsuits are gaining traction from Florida to California.

Charges include 1. Inflating appraisals and pushing borrowers into risky loans and unaffordable mortgages. 2. Packaging bad loans and then pooling them as AAA for sale to unwitting investors.

3. Knowingly granting loans on ALT A, Opt ARM, etc which the borrowers would never be able to pay.

As Janet Tavakoli has stated this is "the greatest fraud in the history of capital markets." JPM, GS, BOFA, ML, Bear Stearns, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutal, and many others were involved in this outrageous scam.

The notary issue is but a small aspect of the systemic fraud that was perpetrated on the people of this country. If justice is not served and Too Big Too Fail is deemed Too Big To Prosecute, then we have gone from a supposed Republic to a Lawless Plutocracy.

They came close to getting Ken Lewis on the stand but when he implicated Bernanke and Paulson, he disappeared from the radar screen.

These cases are cropping up around the country and as more and more documents see the light of day, I suspect that many of our representatives, senators, judges, and others will be implicated in the aforementioned crimes.

So many people get it wrong. They don't get the point. They think that the point was to rush foreclosures in order to recover on bad debts. The U.S. government LONG AGO forgave home mortgage debt. They've run the numbers, they know there is nothing to be recovered. So what was the point of everything from making HAMP difficult to forging affidavits?

I'm guessing that the majority of the MBS are now held by the GSEs, which are guaranteed by the Federal government and secondly, the Fed.

The situation is very clear, the taxpayer is the owner of trillions worth of fraudulent assets. If the government decides to rewrite the law, in order to protect the banks, this will be the greatest "get out of jail" card even granted. I think they tried to sneak it past with the IRON legislation, but they got caught out and Obama knew he couldn't let it slip. Now, the facts are reaching a broader audience and the "it's about deadbeats trying to get a free house" line is starting be be seen past. It's about massive, widespread fraud.

The public frustration with the current status quo is reaching a fever pitch. The thing I have noticed is how angry American have become - angry with immigrants, Muslims, "socialists", progressives, whatever, but they have been angry and confused because they know they are being threatened, but have not realized it is the financial elites and their political cronies that are the greatest threat to their way of life and have been fucking them over for decades..

In some ways, I would like to see the politicians fix it for the bankers again, because then it may create sufficient anger to tear down the edifices of the corruption and cronyism that are destroying the country. If they decide to take radical action, and seize the banks, wipe out shareholders etc, the anger may dissipate, but those to blame will have sold their holdings weeks and months ago (they will have been warned what is coming) and the system will go quiet for a while and then slowly start to reform.

As an aside, I had an amusing thought. Imagine the reference assets John Paulson's "greatest ever trade" are found to be faulty, and essentially unwound. Imagine his synthetic CDO trade is cancelled and the billions he made needs to be returned. Now imagine that the money made has now been invested in US bank stocks, which collapse owing to the fraud cases. Maybe he could go from being a billionaire to a minus billionaire? Now, that would be an amusing twist in the tale...

Perhaps you're right about even Judges being involved. Fortunately for them, they all enjoy judicial immunity. Nonetheless, perhaps it would behoove them to stand up and show the backbone and moral integrity that even Judges in Columbia and Pakistan have demonstrated. At the very least, there's plausible deniability to consider . . . come election time. And the Judicial Bar Commissions that will be hard pressed to demonstrate some kind of integrity to maintain their position vis a vis public confidence.

We'll soon see if there is any semblence of real law in this country.

As for Paulson, that's hilarious. He'll need his buddies to put together a legal defense fund. Hope they can spare a few bucks . . . and stand the heat.

While I appreciate your concern about him getting off scott-free, it is the banksters whom Hitler represents. If this does go viral, it will behoove Barry to differentiate himself from his Wall Street constituency.

Of course, there is a loophole: the Fed will simply henceforth pay for all home purchases.

Damn right they will, they have to, one way or another...

...all bonds (and other kinds of debt instruments) threatened with default will end up being owned by the Federal Reserve. And ultimately, the Fed will print physical cash to meet the contractual terms of these bonds.

Everyone will get paid, but in doing so, the huge quantity of dollars printed will be practically worthless. The debts were pre-existing in this quantity, so they are not really cheating the savers at all. The savers cheated themselves, back when they chose to hold their savings as mere claims in the system.

Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.Sun Tzu

(Reuters) - From currency battles to computerized corporate espionage, fractious international conferences to a new scramble for Africa, "great power politics" is back on the map. The growing power of emerging economies -- particularly China, Russia, India and Brazil -- is redrawing the priorities of foreign and defense ministries, driving financial markets and reshaping the global business environment. Speaking in Geneva last month, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger compared the approach of powers "emerging into confident nationhood" to those of states in the 19th or early 20th centuries. Their rivalries eventually triggered the carnage of World War One. The rise of China in particular is putting international relationships and systems into flux, Kissinger warned. "Chaos may occur but when it does it will sooner or later settle down to some new order," he said -- saying it was essential that statesmen managed this process well to "save humanity from untold suffering."

I was talking to some people on another board. I posted an article that made this mess as simple and understandable as possible. I wanted to see how many had even heard about it, and what they thought of course.

As it turned out there was a guy who claimed (at first) he was in the business and this was all a bunch of shit. There is a thing called a "quiet title" which will solve all the problems. Since I am not a real estate person or a lawyer, I had no idea. I looked that up and couldn't see how that would work but kept it under consideration.

As that conversation went on, he claimed his 20 plus years in the industry with both big banks and then the mortgage industry - and I was just full of shit. So I politely told him to kindly give me the names of who he worked for so I could avoid doing business with them.

Countrywide! I about fell off my chair. I told him Mazilo's trail started this month, I hope he goes to jail for life, and summed my little rant up with the famous "Jump you Fuckers" sign. I was fun, I felt better, might even have a beer. :-)

But I do wonder just how big this could be, or how big they will let it get. This will get papered over somehow. We live in the day where we wonder what justice is, we don't get to see it.

I am still asking for any concrete example of anyone anywhere prevailing in any of this foreclosure-gate. I am not talking about some far-away GMAC federal class action. I am talking about combating the meat and potatoes non-judicial foreclosure process. If there is a California case with an electronic docket showing any defendant successfully throwing a monkey in the wrench of the TBTF foreclosure buzz-saw, every real estate attorney and homeowner cum squatter would like to know these venues, motions, causes and tactics.

I still think the solution is to call in Final Protective Fire on every county recorder's office, or just begin to file bogus re-conveyances and quit claim deeds to cloud title. Let the banks pay the lawyers to sort it all out in say 20 years.

There is a noteworthy scene in the movie "Defiance" where after the Jews and the Russians run off into the Belarussian woods to avoid being killed by the Germans. On their journey they start to figure out who has what skills to sustain their new in-the-woods life. Of course the farmer, the baker and the blacksmith all were smiled upon but when the accountant and lawyer raised their hand announcing their trade, they really weren't too sure what good they were going to be to the tribe.

Life in it's simplist community doesn't take a bankster or lawyer to trade or sort things out, trade happens with real physical things and disputes are settled with laws and brute force.

i'm going to the court house to look at my mortgage, it is in the MERS system and Bank of America is begging to refi my loan. Does anyone have any pointers on what I should be looking for or asking for?

hey, all you wanna be fraudsters, for $95 per month you too can have a virtual office at the same address where MERS has their "global headquarters" with zero employees; 1818 library street, reston virginia 20190

One of the MERS "shareholders" is the Mortgage Bankers Association ... which also has no fixed abode!

They started renting after they strategically defaulted on the underwater mortgage on their $75 million "headquarters". Their hubris in calling for homeowners NOT to default was exposed on Jon Stewart last week.

Here is a little birdhouse for your soul.
White House doubts need to halt all foreclosures

By ALAN FRAM (AP)

WASHINGTON — A top White House adviser questioned the need Sunday for a blanket stoppage of all home foreclosures, even as pressure grows on the Obama administration to do something about mounting evidence that banks have used inaccurate documents to evict homeowners.

"It is a serious problem," said David Axelrod, who contended that the flawed paperwork is hurting the nation's housing market as well as lending institutions. But he added, "I'm not sure about a national moratorium because there are in fact valid foreclosures that probably should go forward" because their documents are accurate.

Axelrod said the administration is pressing lenders to accelerate their reviews of foreclosures to determine which ones have flawed documentation.

"Our hope is this moves rapidly and that this gets unwound very, very quickly," he said.

With the reeling economy already the top issue on voters' minds, the doubts raised over foreclosures and evictions are becoming a political issue with the approach of Nov. 2 elections.

Underscoring those pressures, two leading lawmakers took opposing stances on the wisdom of a moratorium.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a top House Democrat, said she backed a foreclosure moratorium and government talks with the banking industry to concoct ways to let lenders reshape troubled mortgages. She said the foreclosure problem has been "extremely vexing" in her state.

The No. 2 House Republican, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, said a national moratorium would remove the protections that lenders need.

"You're going to shut down the housing industry" with a national stoppage, Cantor said. "People have to take responsibility for themselves."

In recent days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a tough re-election race, urged five large mortgage lenders to suspend foreclosures in his state until they establish ways to make sure homeowners don't lose their homes improperly. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the government is looking into the matter, and Democratic lawmakers urged bank regulators and the Justice Department to probe whether mortgage companies violated laws in handling foreclosures.

The attorneys general of up to 40 states plan to shortly announce a joint investigation into banks' use of flawed foreclosure paperwork, a person familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press late Saturday.

On Friday, Bank of America became the first bank to halt foreclosures in all 50 states. Three other institutions — JPMorgan Chase & Co., Ally Bank's GMAC Mortgage unit and PNC Financial — have stopped foreclosures in the 23 states where foreclosures must be approved by a judge.

President Barack Obama vetoed a bill last week that would have made it easier for banks to approve foreclosure documents, which the White House said could hurt consumers.

Axelrod spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation" while Wasserman Schultz and Cantor appeared on "Fox News Sunday."

Fortunately, he and Barry are ultimately just politicians, which means they will answer to the polls . . . if we get the word out.

And there's that disgraceful place holder, AG Eric Holder:

Attorney General Eric Holder said that the government is looking into the matter, and Democratic lawmakers urged bank regulators and the Justice Department to probe whether mortgage companies violated laws in handling foreclosures.

Affirmative action or not, he's gonna have to be moved out. The man is a disgrace to his own people . . . not to mention his nation as a whole.

To drill down, Axelrod is right: not every foreclosure is defective. Only those involving a MBS owner securitised during the CMBS boom years, say 2002-2007-1/2. This could be figured out. But while everyone is whining about foreclosures, the value of all of these MBSs will become zero rather quickly. Mid week?

Listen to all the bagholders out there gasping for air as they realize they will be getting a margin call due to the fact that their collateral is suddenly illiquid, and thus subject to quite a hefty haircut. Haven't heard that part of this story yet.

I think I'd revise those years of concern. A friend of mine near San Diego's mortgage is fucked up and it goes back to 1999. Also if there was any refinancing during the entire 2000's I would think those people are going to be involved. This is going to be massive.

The interesting part in the whole thing is Mr. "O" has just been handed the ace, king and queen of trump from out of the hand of the bankers. Sorry baby, ya know this thing is out of my hands. Ya want my help this is what your gonna have to do for me and merica. The question is; does he have the balls and brains to use it? Milestones

The middle chart is GLD/SLV. You can see this is an excellent indicator, when this ratio is at a bottom, the market usually tanks, within 3 to 5 days, but sometimes immediately. The trick is figuring out when the bottom is.

This top chart is SPY/VIX I plotted it just to see if any interesting effects came up....none really

The Bottom chart is SPX, the S&P 500, follow each purple line from the GLD/SLV bottoms. Amazing methinks. The two highlighted candle patterns are similar, the first one started the Head of the infamous 2009 Head and Shoulders Bear trap. The second one is NOW.

And finally, a boatload of other charts for your free consumption.

Like this stuff? Sign up as a follower and then follow on your Google reader.

The middle chart is GLD/SLV. You can see this is an excellent indicator, when this ratio is at a bottom, the market usually tanks, within 3 to 5 days, but sometimes immediately. The trick is figuring out when the bottom is.

This top chart is SPY/VIX I plotted it just to see if any interesting effects came up....none really

The Bottom chart is SPX, the S&P 500, follow each purple line from the GLD/SLV bottoms. Amazing methinks. The two highlighted candle patterns are similar, the first one started the Head of the infamous 2009 Head and Shoulders Bear trap. The second one is NOW.

And finally, a boatload of other charts for your free consumption.

Like this stuff? Sign up as a follower and then follow on your Google reader.

That is what they are forcing to happen, even though it looks like they are the ones getting in trouble here.. it's all a big scheme. I don't understand the accounting and who's got what incentive to do what, but putting all the heap of toxic mess onto the Fed, I do.

In Europe none of this is in the news, it simply doesn't exist. I'm trying hard to 'educate' my measly 260 followers on twitter about the upcoming disaster that, without a shadow of a doubt, will have practically the same devastating effect on the european economy as it will have on the US's.

So Tyler, that RT-ing and linking SOB in dutch is me. This has to get out to everyone.

Can't wait to see how the Russian and Chinese Mafia react when they find that their hard-earned drug/bribery/white slavery money was laundered into bad paper. Paulson and Geitner will need to go into witness protection.

Very well done. I would love to see the folks who did this video tackle some more recent films, ala MST 3000. They could probably make great fodder out of a CSI episode as well. Instead of a body laying on the ground, it would be a notarized affidavit.